Bioshock: Father's Trail
by ModernMiser
Summary: When Jean Porter's father goes missing in the rapidly deteriorating city of Rapture (where the justice system can be trusted no more than Atlas's Splicers), she takes it upon herself to perform the perilous investigation. She's determined to find her father by any means necessary, even at the cost of her own life...


6

Bioshock: Father's Trail

Streams of sweat poured over Jean's face as she sprinted down the dark corridor. Every light that she passed burst as soon as she was next to it. The small pops of the glass bulbs made her heart skip each and every time she heard it. Her pants were beginning to sag as she rushed along, and she even though she did her best to pull them up every ten seconds or so, they would always just slip back down.

"_Come here, princess!_" the Spider Splicer screeched from somewhere in the darkness behind her. "_I just want a little taste!_"

Jean shrieked as another light on the wall burst right beside her head. The Splicer had put the fear of God in her; she knew she didn't have much time left. After a moment of deliberation, she finally turned on her heel to run backwards and fire a few shots from her revolver into the darkness. At least, that's what she tried to do. When Jean spun around, she only succeeded in tripping over her own heel and landing hard on her back. The air was knocked cleanly out of her, and the revolver shot a single round into the ceiling before it was tossed clumsily from her hand.

"No, no, no," she gasped, pushing herself onto her elbows in an attempt to scramble backwards.

Suddenly, and to her horror, the Splicer suddenly dropped into view only a few feet away from her. His hands clung on to two metal hooks and the right side of his face was sagging in the most disturbing way. The mucky brown eyes that stared Jean down were yellow and bloodshot, and when he smiled, she saw that he was missing most of his teeth. Even through his bowler hat she could see that his forehead was already beginning to bulge with tumors and boils.

"_Oh, you're a pretty one, aren't you? Don't be scared of me, lass… I only want to roll you up in a sheet._" He licked his bottom lip and began to creep forward, a twisted smile on his face.

Jean's chest heaved up and down in anxiety and exhaustion. She commanded her body to get up and run, but something had severed the communication between her brain and her legs. And so she was left wide-eyed and rooted to the ground.

_This is it, _she thought to herself as the Splicer took another slow step forward and licked his right hook, _this is where I die. _

Two days before…

A young woman, sat alone in a bar. Pensive grey eyes carefully shifted this way and that as her fingertips slowly fell onto the charmingly burnished surface of the bar over and over again. A single drop of sweat dribbled down her left temple, and she quietly wiped it away before continuing to drum on the bar top.

Several people, both men and women, had attempted to buy her a drink in the hour and a half that she had been waiting there, but she always declined. Instead she was nursing a pint of beer that had long since warmed up to room temperature. She had no intention of finishing the drink anyway; the young woman had only taken a sip or two from the glass. She only knew that the one she was supposed to be meeting was over an hour late, and thoughts of leaving began to invade her head.

Just then, a handsome middle-aged man sat beside her, and he immediately set a small wooden box down on the bar in front of himself. His hair was blond and neatly slicked back, and his face was clean shaven – it looked to be professionally done. He wore a coat, a shirt, and slacks but no tie, and she could just make out the bump at his waist where his sidearm must have been holstered.

"You Porter?" he asked after a moment. When the bartender saw him, the blond man pointed to a bottle behind the counter and signaled for a drink.

"Yes, Jean Porter," the young woman replied immediately. "You're Thomas Ebert?"

"Yes ma'am, private investigator," he replied with a subtle charm.

Jean now fully turned her head to look at the detective, "I'll take the box now."

"Not so fast, darlin', I've got a couple of questions to ask before I just hand this over."

"I've paid you the money, give me the box."

Ebert only clicked his tongue and shook his head. Once his drink arrived, he pulled a few dollars from his wallet and paid the bartender.

With a resigned sigh, Jean slowly nodded, "Fine, but I can't stay long. Ask away."

"Well, Ms. Jean Porter," Thomas began, taking a small sip from his glass, "I'd like to know what you do here in Rapture. I want to know if you're a Plasmid user. Most of all, I want to know exactly what you plan to do with the items in this box."

Jean looked away from the private investigator and instead gazed down into her rapidly flattening beer. She tried to think up some irrelevant lie to cover up her desperateness for the contents of the wooden box. There had to be something she could say to this man that didn't involve getting herself into some kind of trouble. It always seemed far too easy to end up in bad situations in Rapture, especially now with the war going on.

However, everything she came up with either sounded too silly or plainly unbelievable. If she just made up lies, they would come around to bite her in the ass, that's how lies always worked in her experience. What could she do? She was out of options.

"I'm a waitress," she finally answered. "Well, I was a waitress, and then, you know, the Splicers."

"You didn't work at the Kashmir Restaurant, did you?"

"I did."

"I'm sorry, that must have been hell. How are you still alive?"

Jean shrugged, "I just ran. I ran as fast as I could, and I didn't stop running until I couldn't hear the screams anymore." She felt a tear well up despite herself, but she clenched her teeth and managed to fight it back down. This wasn't the time for that.

"You don't look like you use any kind of Plasmids or other ADAM-based products."

"No, I don't. I've seen what it does to people."

Thomas grunted, "Yeah, you and me both, sister. One minute you're pretty as a doll, and the next you look like you're fresh off the set of a Boris Karloff film."

It was quiet between the two for a small while. Jean didn't know how to proceed, and she wasn't going to explain why she needed the box unless he asked her again. Still, she caught him looking her over a couple of times, and even though she did her best not to let it happen, her cheeks became regrettably warm.

"Well," Ebert finally said, "I'll tell you what, just give me a few words about this box, and it's yours. No more questions, end of discussion. I think that's fair."

"That's fair," she nodded. She craned her neck to one side and a muffled pop sounded off. She'd been sitting on this damned barstool for too long. "All you need to know is that my father's gone missing, and I'm gonna need everything in that box to help me find him."

Thomas began to shake his head, "People go missing all the time these days, Ms. Porter. The chances of you finding him are -."

"Don't." Jean found herself gripping the sleeve of the investigator's coat. "Don't you dare finish that sentence. He's fine, I know it. I just have to find him."

Ebert looked at her for a long time before reaching over and gently pulling her hand off of his coat. "Alright, Ms. Porter, alright," he said softly, "you win. Here's the box. But listen to me: if you go running down this dark path, you may not like what you find." With that, he reached forward and pushed the box over to Jean and she immediately rested her hands on it.

"I appreciate this," she nodded.

Thomas's face seemed to fall, but he polished off his drink and tipped a nonexistent hat to her as he stood up from his seat. "Be careful out there," he said as he strolled away from the bar.

Jean watched as the investigator left and waited until he was gone before facing the box again. She pushed her pint out of the way and looked around the bar to make sure no one was looking before slowly lifting the cover of the wooden container.

Inside was a revolver with a full six rounds, a small laminated tag with the Securis brand name on it coupled with a collection of neon green dots underneath it, and a detailed map of the living quarters in Apollo Square. Her father had been missing for six days, and this was the closest she had been to figuring out where he had disappeared to. This was her only chance, and she was not going to squander it.

With a renewed sense of purpose, and propelled forward by her recent accomplishment, Jean shut the box, paid for her unfinished beer, and rushed home to prepare herself for the coming search. At last, she was on her father's trail.

To be continued…


End file.
